‘Cambridge Connection’ To The U.K. Terror Plot

A strong “Cambridge connection” to last week’s terror plot has emerged as police try to piece together the domestic and international links of the alleged suspects.

At least four of the eight persons, arrested over the attempted London and Glasgow bombings, met in Cambridge where they happened to be at the same time either as students or doctors.

The two alleged suicide bombers — Bilal Abdulla and his accomplice variously known as Kafeel Ahmed and Khalid Ahmed who tried to blow up Glasgow airport last Saturday — met at an Islamic centre in Cambridge in 2004-2005 and became close friends.

The two Jordanian doctors in police custody — Mohammed Asha and his wife Marwa — were also in Cambridge at the time and knew Dr. Abdulla. The couple worked at the city’s Addenbrooke’s hospital.

It is believed however that the real “nexus” was between Dr. Abdulla, an Iraqi doctor, and Ahmed who is fighting for his life in a hospital in Scotland after suffering life-threatening burns during the failed airport attack. He is thought to be a Lebanese doctor though his nationality has not been confirmed.

On Friday Dr. Ahmed was removed from the Royal Alexandria Hospital to the intensive care unit of Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Police have not been able to speak to him so far.

A former friend of Dr. Abdulla from his Cambridge days described them as “best mates.” Dr. Abdulla, who holds dual British-Iraqi nationality, was born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, where his father was a doctor but moved to Iraq with his parents as a child and grew up there.

He returned to Britain in 2001 and lived with an uncle in Cambridge for a few months. He was back to Cambridge in 2004. By then he had been radicalised. He was also angry over the British-U.S. occupation of Iraq. His uncle told The Daily Telegraph that the airport attack might have been an act of “revenge” by Dr. Abdulla for the destruction of his property in Iraq.

Meanwhile, in an unprecedented media campaign against extremism, a group representing a cross-section of Muslims took out a full-page advertisement in The Guardian condemning the attempted bombings in London and Glasgow. It said Muslims across the United Kingdom were “united” in their condemnation of terrorism. “Islam forbids the killing of innocent people,” it said quoting a Koranic verse that “whoever kills an innocent soul, it is as if he killed the whole of mankind, and whoever saves one it is as he saved the whole of mankind.” Organizers set up a Web site, to promote its message. (The Hindu)
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Links:
1) Iraqi Doctor Charged In U.K. Bomb Plot.
2) Terror' doctors in WA and NSW.